On the morning of Jan. 31, 2023, a 13-year-old student walking to class discovered the bloodied body of a woman behind Lansdowne Middle School.
The school went on lockdown as police responded. Dorothy Rhodes, 27, heard about it all from her boss that day at work. It wasn’t until she got a phone call that evening that she learned the dead woman was her older sister, Audra Pineda.
“I couldn’t speak,” Rhodes told a judge Thursday at the sentencing hearing for Clarence Henson, the man who admitted to killing Pineda.
Feeling numb and in the grip of a panic attack, she began screaming at her boyfriend, in her car.
“The screaming didn’t help any of the gut-wrenching pain,” she said.
Henson, 58, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Pineda’s death last month. On Thursday, Baltimore County Judge Judith C. Ensor sentenced him to 40 years in prison, the maximum sentence for the charge and one that exceeded the crime’s sentencing guidelines.
“It feels like a first-degree murder,” Ensor said of the fatal beating.
Henson becomes eligible for parole after 20 years, but his defense attorneys and prosecutors acknowledged that he likely will die in jail. Hunched over in a red jumpsuit, he spent most of the hearing looking down at the floor.
When he addressed the judge, Henson spoke through sobs, his voice cracking. He apologized to Pineda’s family and his own and said repeatedly that he wanted to die.
“I remember getting high and I was drinking, that’s all I remember. I don’t remember hurting her,” Henson said. “Every day I feel like dying. I don’t know how I lasted this long.”
Thursday’s sentencing hearing revealed a chain of addiction, violence and loss that entangled the families of Pineda and Henson, who police said knew one another.
“We’re really in this whole world of suffering,” said Amanda Wong, an assistant public defender representing Henson.
Wong couldn’t be reached for comment on the sentence. The Office of the Public Defender did not respond to a request for comment.
Emotions ran high in the courtroom gallery Thursday. At one point, proceedings paused for about 20 minutes when courtroom deputies removed one of Pineda’s relatives following an outburst. Loud arguing between the family members and deputies in the hallway had made it impossible to hear the attorneys speak.
Pineda was 37, a mother and wife who was preparing to become a grandmother. Struggling with drug addiction, she weighed less than 100 pounds, according to her autopsy.
She died of blunt force trauma and strangulation, with nearly every bone in her face broken. Her body was so mutilated, particularly her face, that her family had to choose between cremation or a closed casket funeral, Rhodes said.
“We couldn’t see my sister’s face or beautiful blue eyes you could get lost in,” she said.
She said her older sister was goofy, deeply loved her children and was starting a new life with her husband.
Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Fuller played a surveillance video that showed Henson and Pineda walking slowly side-by-side on a path near a grassy field, growing smaller as they approached the back of the school and appeared to stop.
They were behind the school for 6 minutes before Henson walked back alone, Fuller said, leaving Pineda to die.
“He preyed on a woman who was in the throes of addiction,” Fuller said. “He lures her back behind that middle school and he pummels her to death.”
Months before killing Pineda, Henson lost his 33-year-old daughter Bradyna Henson to a murder in April 2022. Her 14-year-old son discovered his mother’s body after her ex-boyfriend Tavon Howard killed her. Howard is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder in her death.
“It just makes it more tragic that you would do to someone what was done to your family,” Ensor told Henson.
Later that year, after Christmas, Henson’s mother died. He missed the funeral when he was hospitalized after being robbed and beaten after visiting an ATM machine, Henson’s wife said in court on Thursday.
Wong said Henson’s grief over his daughter’s death caused a mental break that sent him spiraling back into an addiction to heroin and crack cocaine. He had dealt with substance abuse since he was a teenager and overdosed multiple times, including in October 2022, months after his daughter’s murder.
“He did pass away and they revived him,” Wong said.
His record includes a string of violent offenses dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, but he had put his life on a better path over the last two decades, Wong said.
Clayton Sterling, Henson’s oldest brother, told the judge that his brother was not a monster.
Henson’s wife said he had changed his life since his convictions years ago and “treated her like a queen.” He had struggled to cope with grief and guilt after his daughter’s death, becoming paranoid and crying nightly. She also said Henson believed Pineda had set him up for the mugging that led to his hospitalization.
Although police wrote in charging documents that Henson had turned himself in after authorities published a photo of his face, Fuller said that it was his wife who took him to a police station after recognizing his photo on the news.
Although he initially denied killing Pineda, Henson identified himself in surveillance footage from the pizza restaurant where he met Pineda that night and in a still photo of surveillance from behind the middle school.
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